Cracks in the ivory towers

From outside, universities may seem like havens of calm and civilisation, but an increasing number of academics are suffering from work-related stress, and even bullying. Polly Curtis and John Crace report

There's a saying that if you think you're standing still, then you're probably going backwards. If true, then the collective psyche of UK academics may be in even worse shape than first thought. Six years ago, Gail Kinman of the University of Luton produced her first survey into stress and work-life balance in higher education, which revealed levels of stress far in excess of most other professions. Today Kinman, with Fiona Jones from Leeds University, publishes a report for the Association of University Teachers, Working to the Limit, that shows continuing cause for concern.

"I had rather expected that my 1998 findings would turn out to be a blip," says Kinman. "Academics were then in the process of having to adjust to changes in the system - increased bureaucracy and more pressure both to extend student contact time and to get published - and hadn't yet learned to cope with the pressure. I had imagined that administrators and staff would have found a way to manage and improve the system."

It hasn't quite turned out that way. Pressure to publish for the research assessment exercise is still intense, and the focus on undergraduate personal development planning continues to stretch the working day to its limits. Meanwhile fixed-term contracts, threats of redundancy, unsympathetic management styles and good old-fashioned departmental back-stabbing keep the nights sleepless.

"There appears to be no consistency across universities," Kinman continues. "Nearly half of all academics have no idea whether their institution even provides stress management training, and the reported levels of stress remain consistent with six years ago.

"Some things have even got worse. In 1998, 44% of respondents reported that they had considered leaving higher education. This time round, the figure has risen to 47%. We have no way of knowing just how many of those who considered leaving in 1998 carried out that threat, but these numbers cannot be good for the morale and health of the profession."

Kinman and Jones polled 1,100 academics and academic-related staff at 99 universities. Nearly half say they are constantly under strain, over two-thirds (69%) say that they find their work stressful and 78% believe that the status of their profession is in decline. Seventy-two per cent of academics find that their first thought every morning is about work.

The list goes on and gets worse. Half show borderline levels of psychological distress. Eight out of 10 say that as the result of that stress they are tired even when they've slept; over half say they experience headaches and 41% have trouble sleeping. One in five report dizziness, heart pounding or skin rashes, which they put down to stress.

But there is a silver lining. University workers do feel they have a choice in what they do at work and how they do it. Some 81% agreed with a statement that said they had the possibility to "learn new things" in their jobs. These are strong reasons for staying in the profession and probably more like the image that outsiders have of universities.

Outside of these ivory towers, people are unsympathetic. The view of universities is of the leafy campus and quiet library; places for contemplation and debate, not nailbiting and backstabbing. Schoolteachers, not scientists, have nervous breakdowns because of workload; bully-boy tactics are rife in the stock exchange, not the library. What on earth do academics have to be stressed about?

"Every job comes with its own internal psychological contract," Kinman says. "The deal that most academics make with themselves when they enter the profession is that they will be trading a lower salary for greater autonomy and flexibility.

"When they discover that not only are the pressures as intense - if not more so - than in other professions, but that much of their workload has been reduced to bureaucracy, they feel cheated that the contract has been violated. They are in effect mourning the loss of the job they thought they had."

Cary Cooper, professor of organisational psychology and health at Lancaster University and a leading researcher into work-related stress, says: "People have this view that academics are people who have long holidays, teach a bit and then play with some research," he says.

"People don't have sympathy for us. They will have sympathy for doctors and nurses. Who trains the doctors? We do. Who trains the nurses, the social workers, the teachers? We do. Who trains all the people they worry about? Us. These attitudes add to the problem. We don't perceive ourselves to be valued."

Three-quarters of academics polled by the AUT said there had been a decline in status for academic staff in the past five years.

Cooper says the near-epidemic levels of stress on British campuses can be blamed on the pace of change. "The talk about mergers, the downsizing, the restructuring, the 'take more students' demands are all putting stresses and strains on people. Too much change can be the move-maker for someone who's struggling."

The majority in the AUT survey blame stress levels on the lack of time to prepare for lessons, classes that are too big and the massive expansion of paperwork that has come with the stepped-up quality control and monitoring systems.

Meanwhile, 90% say that the pressure to get their research published has also increased. Some researchers say that this dichotomy between research and teaching leaves them with a tough and career-debilitating choice.

David Roberts (not his real name) is only 26, but he runs a research team at a Russell Group university. He's exactly what the ageing workforce needs, yet is considering leaving because he feels so torn between teaching and research.

"There's disjunction between short-term targets - the marking of 60 dissertations or something - and doing research that will advance your career. You're stressed by missing what you're meant to be doing in the short term, then by the fact that you know your career is slipping away from you.

"You either have to stand up to management or do their bit and see your career suffering. I'm a young academic on a fixed-term contract. I need to publish to get another job, or have this job go permanent."

At the heart of it, he says, is the research assessment exercise, the government's tool for making universities compete for cash to fund their research. Individual departments' research income is based on the number of papers their people have published. If you're not publishing, you're a liability, even if you're busy with other things. Like, for instance, teaching.

"The vice-chancellor says we're a research-led university, but we're doing that in our spare time because teaching in itself is a full-time occupation," says Roberts, who is looking for a new job. He's thinking of leaving the Russell Group after he approached one former polytechnic, which told him his workload would be half the number of students he currently works with.

Roberts talks in a resigned, disappointed fashion. But others are angry with their bosses, the vice-chancellors and even the government for allowing their workload to spiral out of control.

Andy Robinson is in charge of the student administration office at Queen Mary, University of London. He says he's struggling to keep the university's record system afloat as the pressures pile on: increasing accountability, different types of learning and marking, more overseas students and more plagiarism, and a creaking computer system. "I have seen this place go down the tubes," he says. "Trying to get 50% of young people into HE is farcical. It puts pressure on institutions.

"I'm furious that I can't do my job properly. My appraisal was one of the most negative experiences in my life because the targets I had set myself in the one previously were unattainable. No matter what I want to do, I can't take it forward. I used to enjoy my job, I think it is a worthwhile job to do, but I think there are so many ways we could do this better."

Joanna Bryson is a computer scientist who has worked in three Ivy League institutions in the US and is now settled in Bristol. She is at the other end of the paper trail. "The major source of frustration is the lack of administration - secretarial resources are seen as something that can be cut here. People do their own photocopying. In America, there tends to be a secretary for every two or three professors," she says.

Bryson worked in financial services in Chicago before becoming an academic. "The thing I like best about industry is that when you go home it's over," she remembers. "But in academia there's always more work you could be doing, a lecture to write or a paper to research."

The AUT research found some worrying issues concerning work-life balance. The boundaries between home and work in the life of the academic are wafer-thin - even more so if, like 20% of those polled, you live with another academic. On average, a quarter of academics' working life happens at home. Some 10% of academics check their email five times a day at home. Many people appreciate this flexibility in working, but not when those hours are in excess of a full working week in the office. Those who did manage to separate their home and work lives were less likely to be suffering from stress.

What it seems the university workforce is desperate for, in an age of the RAE, soaring student numbers, shifting structures and the blurring of their working lives into their home life, is a damn good manager. And that's what they say they aren't getting in universities.

Eva Berglund quit a University of London anthropology department, and academia altogether, because of the "big egos and bad morale". The culture was unbearable. "There's an institutional sense of nobody trusting you, and you have to create a paper trail, which makes you feel under surveillance. You have no power to do anything if the feedback is bad."

What runs through the AUT report is a strong sense of a huge divide between them and us. People are generally happy with their colleagues - 57% report that they are "satisfied" with the people with whom they work on the same level. But that figure decreases as you go up the career ladder: a third are dissatisfied with their immediate bosses and 56% are unhappy with the support they receive from senior managers. Some 73% disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement "management has become more sensitive to the needs of academic staff".

Sue Blackwell, an AUT representative at Birmingham University, who herself has suffered from stress and now counsels other members, says that managers in any other organisation are employed because they are good with people. But this doesn't happen in universities. "People take these jobs because they want to do teaching and research, they then get promoted to management, for which they are not trained or experienced," she says. "They are promoted because they have a lot of publications, because that's what counts. But they are not necessarily good at dealing with people as human beings."

Good management is more than a cup of coffee, a shoulder to cry on and a few touchy-feely words of comfort. Fiona Jones suggests that a useful starting point in alleviating stress would be a clarification of just what is and isn't expected of staff.

"There needs to be much more realistic expectations of what is possible," she says. "Universities want their staff to become far more visible within the department, to be available at all times for students. But this is clearly incompatible with the more invisible, contemplative demands of research. There needs to be a clear division of time: employers can't just have it both ways."

Both authors are anxious that the report should be considered constructive rather than antagonistic. "One does need to be careful about how the findings are presented," says Kinman. "We don't want academics to come across as a bunch of moaning minnies. It's as important that staff understand the pressures of management's job as vice versa."

Kinman's concerns may be groundless. Most employers recognise that stress is a critical issue. "Stress is stress - regardless of the causes or whether it's perceived or actual," says Matt Grainger, communications adviser for the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (Ucea). "Universities are committed to providing support to staff."

The backbone of this support will be the release of new guidelines to update the 1999 publication, Dealing with Stress. "It would be wrong to pre-empt the new report," says Clive Parkinson, health and safety adviser for the Ucea, "but it's safe to assume that the review will be based on pilot studies of stress-management schemes in universities, such as Birmingham, and the six stress standards published recently by the Health and Safety Executive.

There's no doubting the sincerity of the commitment, but the fact is that any guidelines will remain just that. Guidelines. There are no statutory demands on any employer, so inevitably provision is likely to be at best inconsistent and at worst non-existent.

The situation is far from ideal. Even so, as Kinman points out, there's still plenty of room for the situation to get worse.

"With the introduction of top-up fees," she says, "students are likely to become even more demanding and vociferous consumers. They will expect even more from their academics."